Rebuilding spring packs, paint or not (1 Viewer)

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north idaho
Ia m taking the spring pak, OME heavys, off the old cruiser, rebuilding and putting on the FJ. Any opinions on weather to paint or not? I have wire brushed and removed old rust etc. I am replacing the spring straps etc. Could they be oiled and put back togather?
 
Is this a real question?

Paint them if you want to.
 
I don't know what I'm talking about and sorry if this is too much of a thread hijack.
Would it be worth giving then a quick polish/buff whatever to remove any high spots, painting and then applying a layer of graphite powder in between the leaves before reassembly?
I've seen those little white teflon pads placed between leaves, but would graphite power do well, it won't attract dust like oil/grease.
 
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Of course paint 'em (you're only allowed flat black), and use moly grease liberally. If you need new ones of those plastic thingies between the leaves, you can get 'em from cruiseroutfitters.com
 
You want to paint any metal that goes on your cruiser unless you are going for the rust look and reduced life. I cleaned mine up and painted them flat black with some rust zero rattle cans.
 
I've never done it but a couple of years ago I read a thread about using a graphite impregnated paint that was called (iirc) Slip Plate or similar.
 
Hey, thanks all, I guess in hind sight it was a bit of a vague and not well developed question. I did have my plan of wire wheeling, 3 coats primer, then 3 coats Rustoleum matte. It is turning out quite well. Found the ~3/8 pin thta runs through the spring pack was sheared, plus broke all off the u bolts removing the springs from axle, so a few costs, but so far so good.
 
You can get those broken parts from Kurt @ cruiserouttfitters.com , if you don't have a source, yet..
 
six coats might be overkill
 
I've never done it but a couple of years ago I read a thread about using a graphite impregnated paint that was called (iirc) Slip Plate or similar.

I read that thread I think.....Seemed like this Slip Plate stuff worked pretty well. No idea where the guy got it though.
 
I believe it's slipplate.com. a searched yeilded a similar product called slide and glide.
 
i suppose that if you do a lot of very low-speed crawling, you might gain a very small amount of articulation from the graphite paint. i think Tom Boyd used something similar in Das Beast many moons ago. might have luck searching with that
 
So I just put slide and glide into the search engine...at work...I wasn't thinking. Big red screen ACCESS DENIED...guess I'll have to look when I get home
 
Something like a strip of acetal (aka "Delrin") between leaves that do not have the plastic pucks is an old hot rodder's soft ride trick. Some hot rod shops even sell a shallow 'U' shaped channel of the stuff just for this use.
Teflon will 'cold flow' (squeeze) out over time and is not a good choice.

For leaves that do have the plastic pucks I've wondered about borrowing a trick from the GM63's and putting a thin spacer between each leaf pair. Would cut down the leaf to leaf friction even better than the acetal would.
 
Something like a strip of acetal (aka "Delrin") between leaves that do not have the plastic pucks is an old hot rodder's soft ride trick. Some hot rod shops even sell a shallow 'U' shaped channel of the stuff just for this use.
Teflon will 'cold flow' (squeeze) out over time and is not a good choice.

For leaves that do have the plastic pucks I've wondered about borrowing a trick from the GM63's and putting a thin spacer between each leaf pair. Would cut down the leaf to leaf friction even better than the acetal would.
What would you use as the thin spacer?
 
The spacers would be roughly the same length as the spring perch on the axle housing and I'd do like GM and use 1/16"-3/32" thick steel.
 

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